Unplug Jetpack: Use Jetpack Modules Without Connecting to WordPress.com

Connecting a WordPress.com account in order to use Jetpack can be a hassle, especially when developing for clients or working on your local machine. If you like Jetpack but don’t want to connect to WordPress.com, there’s a new plugin that makes it easy to use the features that don’t require a connection.

Unplug Jetpack was created by WordPress developer Tanner Moushey. With the plugin activated, you won’t be required to connect to WordPress.com unless you need to use Site stats, Publicize, Related Posts, etc. If you don’t see the module you’re looking for among the others, that means that it likely requires a WordPress.com connection in order to use it.

The Unplug Jetpack plugin essentially puts Jetpack into development mode. Development mode was introduced in Jetpack 2.2.1 to help developers with local testing. It allows you to use features that do not require a connection to WordPress.com servers. Ordinarily, turning on development mode requires adding a line to your wp-config.php file or employing the filter via a plugin.

Unplug Jetpack is convenient, because it allows you to turn development mode on/off using a plugin. It uses the Jetpack-supported method for doing this and consists of just a couple lines of code:

When asked whether or not the plugin offers a performance boost as opposed to using non-WordPress.com dependent modules with the connection to WordPress.com, Moushey said that it’s unlikely to have a significant performance impact. “But that is not really the point of this,” he said. It’s the principle of the matter – being able to use Jetpack’s code without the requirement of connecting to a third party. Unplug Jetpack lets you do that with the flip of a switch.

As a favor, if you’re going to use this on client sites, let them know somehow you’ve added this. You’d be surprised the support requests that come to the Jetpack team asking why Jetpack isn’t working to discover the site was put in dev mode by the original developer. :-)